The Gift and the Garden: Nasira's Story (A Working Title)
by lasturnelle
Summary: In the palace garden, as the other children play, a mystical transformation occurs. Within maidservant Nasira's heart of hearts, past and present, love and hate, reality and imagination meet- and new life is created, memory renewed, and destinies forever altered. A tale of sanctuary in a world at war.


The garden was a melancholy little place- the winds through the trees always sounded as if it were missing something- constantly reaching out for a note in the air, pushing towards a crescendo that they didn't have it in them to reach. But it was not nearly as somber as the rest of the palace, mournful and dark and beautiful. Here, Nasira could hear the children play, and yet in their boisterous babble seemed to be a song of mourning. Though she was no older than eight or nine herself, she didn't consider herself a "child." They seemed so far away- though the garden was small, they might have been oceans away.

Once or twice, through the trees, she caught his gaze. She relished the moment or two when they locked eyes- she couldn't look away. In the prince's eyes of warm amber and gold, she saw the same look that she saw each day in the mirror- a look of incredulity, of discovery. And beyond that, invisible, a look of sorrow- sorrow out of which neither could yet fathom a cause. Like a fortuneteller's eyes, they were. In the garden, the children were two ancient souls watching visions of the future dance across each other's faces.

Here, the sun could shine bright enough to hurt her eyes and still not penetrate the darkness hanging over the place. She knew he felt it, too. She knew it from the very first time he looked at her that way. She had glanced his way, not expecting to see that same sadness in his eyes, and it had caught her off guard. It drove itself through her body like a knife, that sadness. She stood, suddenly, and ran away, unable to choke back bitter tears of sadness, even of hatred.

She collapsed in the hall, a weak, sputtering mound. To one who stood watching, she might've looked larger than she really was, her tiny body full of emotions of such magnitude. But the only tears Nasira could bear to shed were shed in dark corners of empty rooms, in places only she knew. And so she pressed her cheek to the hard, stone wall of the palace and cried, her body exhausted from fighting back such bitterness.

Why was it he affected her in this way? The answer, though a mystery to her then, would become clearer as the spent more time in this proximity. She felt the universe nudging them closer, into this shared space, this mystical space that was the palace garden.

Nasira felt as if all the cosmic energy in the world had pooled there, in the garden, at one time or another. Yes, here, she determined, centuries worth of stories waited to be told, cried out for somebody who might justly speak the words that generations past had missed the chance to say. So she spoke them, at first under her breath. But gazing into the pond's quiet, glassy blue surface one day, she decided whispers were not a fair price for the tears wept into the water there. So her voice grew louder, day by day, with each sighting of her own sorrowful reflection. It grew into a song, swirling in the air around her, following the path of the wind through the trees, nuanced, delicate, shy. In verse she sang of the characters that she imagined had walked the garden paths before her, complex and unique and ever changing- living dreams, complete and astoundingly real.

But still, they begged for more. So one day, Nasira rose from the kneeling position she had taken by the pond- the grass rising out of the imprint of her legs (for she had knelt there every day, and worn a depression in the ground, like a river carving out a canyon) as if to aid her in standing, as if urging her to do so. And she took a deliberate step, foot turned out, shoulders back, head tilted slightly upward. And another. And she began to dance. She danced and the grass rejoiced with her, and the wind and the trees synchronized with her every move, nature rejoicing- for its story was finally being told.

Soon, as she danced and sang and created new lives in verse, tongues of flame leapt out of her toes, her fingertips. Without noticing it, she was firebending. And no blade of grass felt the heat of these flames, white hot though they were, and no bird or insect retreated in fear. These were flames born of the garden, that belonged there, magnificent and rare as every creature that called it home. They were created to tell stories- given unto her, as Nasira would come to believe, to serve as a tool for honoring those tales, for crafting them, setting them into motion, nursing them to life in shadow and flash of light.

And with life, Nasira lit up like a rebellious, glowing ember in a dying bonfire, her vitality a stark and lovely contrast against the grey, foreboding air that the palace's inhabitants knew. And the garden grew smaller- the other children suddenly found themselves next to her, unable to tear their eyes away. First the prince, then, shyly, the others, emerged from the greenery to watch. They pressed their souls to hers, let her music echo within them. They traded emotions- they knew her suffering, and they heard her singing theirs back to them, honoring it with words and movements and tones. Suddenly they found themselves unafraid of tears, of laughter, of lashing out angrily or reaching out in compassion. Suddenly everything they felt was real, hung in the air around them, flowed through the trees above their heads, leapt through the grass by the pond. Suddenly, the whole world around them was emboldened, suddenly everything was more real.

And where Ursa saw that it was good- that her son and even her daughter had found sanctuary at last- there were others who feared it. Who feared the children's new lack of fear, who feared this newness altogether. The illicit tongues of flame danced a farandole around her, and the others leapt back in fear. Disobedience, they murmured. The seeds of youthful rebellion.

They were the head servants, women who could not bear the thought of losing their grip on the wills of those beneath them. They told her she was never again to move this way, never again to let a song or a rhyme forth from her lungs, even as a whisper. Never again to feel alive- the kind of alive that comes from dancing with flames. Never- not ever. And for good measure, they threatened her, they beat her, they locked her away from the light and the wind and the smell of the trees and the call of the birds. For days she felt her body grow weak, felt the life all but drain away from it. For days she stared longingly at the iron bolt that kept her imprisoned there, in the servants' quarters, but it was not like the other things she had known- things that grew in the garden, things that felt as she felt, moved as she moved- there was no life within the cold, grey iron bolt, and so she was fettered there, afraid, helpless to but watch the gift take flight and leave her, for somewhere brighter, somewhere freer, somewhere it could be told as it longed to be. Nasira grew, in those days, numb, cold, and unyielding as the iron bolt that bound her in that suffocating little space.

But within her, life burned on, a rebellious little ember where the rest of her had turned to ash. A warm amber glow colored her heart, refusing to die. It was Nasira's gift- it belonged to her now, and she belonged to it- neither could be separate. The glow refused to relinquish the soul it had fought so hard to claim, and Nasira only wished to hold on to the joy she felt basking in its sunny glow.

But it would be many years before they found each other again.


End file.
